


My Heart upon a little Plate

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Conversation, F/M, Romance, christmas pudding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The intention is to create something sweet, savory, rich-- and then set it on fire.





	

“There just isn’t enough suet, let alone molasses or cinnamon and even if I could manage the eggs for the pudding, there wouldn’t be enough for custard,” Mary said in a low voice. 

She and Jed were watching over little Private Timothy Pratchett, who’d most certainly lied about his age to enlist, and was now in a fair way to be lame, if he managed to keep the leg at all. He’d live, because Samuel was a brilliant diagnostician and Jed humble enough, at least in that way, to admit it, and because Jed had gone to the right lecture in the theater in Paris on a bitterly cold afternoon and had learned what he needed to keep the boy alive. Pratchett was still under the ether’s soporific and that made a suitable excuse for their dilatory conversation; Mary liked to think Pratchett’s mother would thank them for the attention they were paying to the boy, even if he didn’t capture all of it. She’d written to the woman before the surgery and there was a good chance Mrs. Pratchett would arrive before Christmas, to take their places sitting with her son, and to shepherd him home to the farm in southern Maine.

“I can’t tell whether you are more affronted by the deficits of your larder, or embarrassed by them. Perhaps you are the _Hausfrau_ we all expected to arrive when Miss Dix wrote of the Baroness von Olnhausen,” Jed said, grinning at her.

“Oh hush! I should only like to give the boys something like home and now they mayn’t even make a wish on Stir-up Sunday,” Mary replied. 

She didn’t care for Christmas pudding very much, so richly sweet, swimming in rum butter or custard, a recipe for dyspepsia it always seemed, but she missed the making of it. There were afternoons of pitting the baskets of stone fruit, currants and raisins, ruddy, plump cherries, the fragrance of the spices and the brandy filling the kitchen, the broad basin of the sink and glossing the window panes that brought in the winter sunlight. How much care it needed from everyone in the making and how much they all enjoyed trooping into the kitchen to help, then wandering the snowy woods for the perfect sprig of holly! Mary missed most the day of stirring the wishes in, how Caroline screwed up her hazel eyes against the steam when she wished and George looked beseechingly to Heaven, how Gustav had been so bemused and had held her hand as he made a wish he confided with his arms around her at night, his beard tickling her neck so she would arch into him, his dearest Mareike. She hadn’t made a Christmas pudding the last year or so, too busy with Gustav’s illness and then, at Caroline’s house with her nephews so red-cheeked with excitement and glee, she hadn’t been able to think of a wish to guide her hand in the stirring. 

Looking at Jed, his cravat loosened and his sober vest fraying at the button-holes, his dark eyes bright and his beard in need of trimming, she could think of a hundred wishes, a thousand she wanted to make, could hardly help making as she walked the wards every day, cared for the men, lay in her bed alone counting her heartbeat with only her own hand to lay against her breast. She sighed for thinking of it and he noticed, of course he did, and his grin became a softer smile, fondly affectionate and curious but undemanding.

“I guess they’ll all wish for the War to end, to be home again with their sweethearts and wives and mammas. Men are not so very complicated,” he said and looked away, looking for something she couldn’t see.

“Is that what you would wish for, Jedediah?” she asked. It was a coquette’s question and she was not, it was a risk to ask and dangerous for him to answer. The boy between them stirred and soon would awaken; there would be no more excuse for such a conversation, however much they desired to continue it.

“I must, mustn’t I? For peace, for the Union…I’m selfish enough, but I’d wish for that.”

How he said it—for peace, a national resolution, but nothing of the personal consolations, the tender lover, the proud wife, a home that was gracious refuge, however plain it might be. She had not inquired, it was not her place, but he’d made remarks about what the War had cost him, every tie though he’d counted it less than his life, his honor, made it clear he didn’t feel himself deserving of pity. She didn’t pity him, though she didn’t say it; pity was too small, too narrow, for what she felt. She wondered if he could let himself wish for what she longed to give him but could not offer. He hadn’t sounded bitter but resigned and she thought she might find a way to suggest he might have what any man wanted, if only he would ask. She thought of the warm kitchen, the basin waiting for the pudding and the crockery bowl of currants, the wooden spoon with its handle smooth from years of use.

“A proper Christmas pudding needs a lot of stirring. Should that be all you’d wish for, the end of all of this?” she prodded him, feeling as she did when the equation’s solution was almost clear, the proof nearly complete and incontrovertibly right, perfect as a crystal Gustav had distilled and refined at the mill’s laboratory, brought home to show her in a twist of paper, poured out like tiny diamonds in her palm.

“Oh, I’ve any number of wishes, Mary. I’ve gotten very good at wishing, you see,” he said, looking back at her. “It’s my patience that is wanting.”

If they had been alone, would he have taken her hand? Would he, impatient, selfish man he professed to be, have pulled her into his arms and spoken the wishes into her ear, her bared throat, would she have been able to taste them in her mouth? Would he have said anything at all if that had been possible or would he have stayed silent or glib or spoken about Mrs. Pratchett’s imminent arrival? He trusted her so much, more than he ought to and yet not enough; she should make him see his error and decide what to do about it.

“Perhaps your patience is not required. It is a virtue, but not the only one. You might save it for the wards,” she suggested.

“I, what shall I do then, if I’m not to wait?”

“Fortune favors the bold, does she not? Isn’t that why Pratchett here may walk the acres of his farm this spring? Hale could not have saved his leg,” It was like the instant the pudding was lit, the blue flame an aurora, the gasp they would give to see it. “If you are so selfish, you shouldn’t hesitate to demand what you want—or you are a liar? Which is it, Jedediah?” she asked, keeping her own smile quite small. Jed did not. He laughed, a blithe, unburdened sound she couldn’t remember hearing from him.

“I’m an honest officer of the Union Army, madam, never you fear,” he replied. 

“Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?” she said. 

“I hope that it is, very much so, Mary. And I hope I’m not the only one whose wishes come true. I’m not that selfish, though you haven’t gotten to make your pudding as you wanted.”

“Haven’t I?” she answered, tasting the sweetness of the words as she spoke, the fading bite of the cloves, the light in his dark eyes turning them the color of brandy, twice as dizzying as any liquor.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Christmas pudding because I really wouldn't have written this otherwise. Best discovery while writing: Stir-Up Sunday. Left out: silver charms/token put in the pudding like a thimble or coins. Doubled down on Christmas pudding-ness with my American Cratchitts --> Prachetts. Believe I am more a gingerbread girl after reading these recipes.
> 
> Title: Emily Dickinson.


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